


Limbo

by TheonSugden



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Gen, Injury, Mentions of Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheonSugden/pseuds/TheonSugden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being injured during the disaster, Debbie hovers between life and death. While waiting, she is comforted by a familiar face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

Debbie had always heard - well, since she was about 12, really - that Dingles never gave up.

She felt like she’d given up ages ago. Why stop now?

She was in this white room, laughing, or trying to laugh, because she already had a white dress, white hair…white hair she thought was coming out in clumps until she realized it was debris from the roof crashing in on her. 

Maybe the white-on-white-on-white was trying to tell her something. The lighter her hair, the more she’d tried to be good, and the more the world spat back in her face. 

The room changed now, but stayed the same. Voices and shouting and crying and whispering. She yelled out for Sarah and Jack, but she couldn’t hear herself, so how could anyone else?

She’d given up with Pete. And if she was being honest with herself, she’d given up with Ross too. He was supposed to make her feel good, feel special in some “real” way Pete with his poems and roses on trays and back massages never could.

Instead he’d just made her work, made her tired, just like Pete, but in a different way.

She knew she was supposed to feel guilty - and she did feel guilty every time she remembered the slow death in Pete’s eyes, the way his hands on her arms squeezed her like she was a stranger, or like she was Ross - but she mostly just felt tired.

She had to keep going for Sarah and Jack, but she didn’t want to deal with everything else. Ross and Pete. Dad always making sure she knew she would mess everything up without him. Mum doing her best to make sure she’d mess up what Debbie already hadn’t done herself. Dan and his fussing. The slow grind and fade into the dust that was in her nose and eyes and mouth. The taunts that she used to be more than this, that she went on the rob, that she lived it up in casinos, drove her own cabs, wore sexy dresses with all the eyes in the room wanting more.

She hadn’t been happy then either, but if she could do it now…she’d be happy, right? 

She shook her head, more clumps falling in her lap as she did. She’d never be happy. She wasn’t supposed to be happy.

Small hands held hers together, wiped her face, brushed her hair, dried her tears when she knew who it was. 

“Gennie…oh God…not you Gennie…”

Gennie just smiled at her, the way Gennie always smiled, the way Debbie sometimes thought made her simple or fake, didn’t appreciate until it was too late. 

“I’m staying with you until you get back to that beautiful boy and girl. And then you’re going to go visit Molly and give her a big cuddle for me…promise?”

Debbie nodded, this time with clean, shiny hair, gleaming white, like the room.

“I promise, Gennie.”


End file.
